Studying the American Republic

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Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Algernon Sidney, America's founders, America's Founding era, American radicalism, american republic, Areopagitica, Blackstone, books, Carnation Revolution of 1974, Cato's Letters, Common Sense, Daly, decentralization, Discourses on Livy, entropy, Estado Novo, F.A. Hayek, Fred Hirsch, Georgescu-Roegen, Gordon, Gunnar Myrdal, Hannah Arendt, Henry Neville, Hofstadter, Hume, J.S. Mill, James Harrington, Jane Jacobs, Jeffersonian republicanism, John taylor of caroline, Karl Polyani, Locke, Machiavelli, Marchamont Needham, Milton, Mircea Eliade, Montesquieu, On Revolution, Online Library of Liberty, Peter Kropotkin, Portugal, reading, republicanism, research, Rights of Man, Salazar, Schumpeter, small-r republicanism, steady-state economics, The Age of Reason, The Anti-Federalist Papers, The Constitution of Liberty, The Federalist Papers, The Road to Serfdom, Thomas Paine, Trenchard, Whyte, Wilhelm Ropke, Yehoshua Arieli

From time to time, I have had someone ask me, “What did you research before you started writing on the American Republic?” I think the assumption is that I can rattle off a half-dozen titles and tell them to take it from there. Unfortunately, I cannot.

What follows is a list of the works I studied prior to launching my blog in late 2008 (it was then independent, not hosted by WordPress), and prior to posting my white papers online, starting in late 2009. The papers were first posted on Scribd, and are now on Google Drive, a move inspired by the moderator of a blogging community – to which I belonged – who asked me to consider a different platform since my posts were too long, a sin which I still commit.

You will notice that for the most part, I do not recommend specific chapters or sections. In reading courses at university, professors will undertake such recommendations, either out of consideration for the student’s time, or out of desire to guide the student to the professor’s ideologies.

The former is understandable, the latter contemptible.

Are Free Marketers Blind to Tyranny? Part 2

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A Humane Economy, capitalism, Cato's Letters, centralization, economic power, economic tyranny, economism, F.A. Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, Hannah Arendt, John Trenchard, Joseph A. Schumpeter, liberty, monied corporations, On Revolution, political tyranny, regulatory action, Socialism and Democracy, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory, The Road to Serfdom, Thomas Jefferson, wage labor, Wilhelm Ropke

In picking up on our discussion of economic tyranny from yesterday, the argument contended that to blindly submit to market forces creates an atmosphere for economic tyranny to arise, every bit as dangerous as political tyranny. This singular belief in markets, to the exclusion of all other considerations, is folly. Both the economic and the political institutions that arise in a society were given space by America’s founders for the betterment of the individual, not the converse.

Economist Wilhelm Röpke noted in The Humane Economy that to focus merely on the economic is to place blinders over our eyes, that

“we have narrowed our angle of vision and do not forget that the market economy is the economic order proper to a definite social structure and to a definite spiritual and moral setting. If we were to neglect the market economy’s characteristic of being merely a part of a spiritual and social total order, we would become guilty of an aberration…” (emphasis added – ed.).

Röpke squarely embeds the economy within the social, within society.

Are Free Marketers Blind to Tyranny? Part 1

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A Humane Economy, capitalism, Cato's Letters, centralization, economic power, economic tyranny, economism, F.A. Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, Hannah Arendt, John Trenchard, Joseph A. Schumpeter, liberty, monied corporations, On Revolution, political tyranny, regulatory action, Socialism and Democracy, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory, The Road to Serfdom, Thomas Jefferson, wage labor, Wilhelm Ropke

All too frequently we hear free marketers in America bemoan regulatory action, suggesting such action actually hampers a sorely needed economic recovery. Free markets, they state, will ultimately sort things out. Yet, do we ever hear these voices caution against economic tyranny? It seems economic tyranny is simply not in their vocabulary. Why?

To blindly submit to market forces creates an atmosphere for economic tyranny to arise, every bit as dangerous as political tyranny. This singular belief in markets, to the exclusion of all other considerations, is folly. Both the economic and the political institutions that arise in a society are there for the betterment of the individual, not the converse. The German American political theorist Hannah Arendt understood this when she observed that

“Free enterprise… is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best of conditions. Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence” (On Revolution, Chp. 6).

Any doubt about these sentiments, written in 1963, can be placed aside when one considers China, a country that has fully embraced capitalism and has taken a commanding lead in global economic growth because of it. Yet, the Chinese enjoy very little in the way of political freedoms. Capitalism does not need political freedom to thrive; in fact, centralized capitalism can create tyrannies of its own.

Economic tyranny arises when the vast majority of citizens are wage laborers. By the very need of an income, wage laborers are at the mercy of centralized economic forces that are seemingly beyond control; one’s fate rests in the hands of others unseen, unknown. Such forces are not part of the “invisible hand” of which Adam Smith spoke.